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The Chinese spy ship that sailed international waters off the coast of Alaska during a recent missile defense test was a class that had never been seen before in Northern Command’s area-of-responsibility, a spokesperson said Friday.

It was the first Chinese military vessel in the area since 2015 when a Chinese “surface action group” transited through, said Michael Kucharek, a spokesperson for North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command.

Kucharek would not speculate as to what the ship was doing in the area, but mentioned several times that it was in international waters where it had the right of free navigation.

A military source familiar with the incident told The Epoch Times it was the same ship as reported by the Diplomat on July 4th, a Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy Type 815 Dongdiao-class auxiliary general intelligence (AGI) vessel.

Chinese state-owned media, the English language China Daily, reported on the ship in January in an article based on a report from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) news outlet. The report focused on a newly commissioned ship, the Kaiyangxing.

The ship that was present for the missile test was the Tianlangxing, which passed through the Tsugaru Strait off the coast of Japan on July 2, according to the Japanese Ministry of Defense.

According to the PLA report cited by the China Daily, the PLA Navy now operates six electronic reconnaissance vessels. The report also gave specific information about the ships such as their capabilities and functions.

“Until now, the PLA Navy has never made public so many details about its intelligence collection ships,” said the report.

The newly launched Kaiyangxing was capable of conducting all-weather, round-the-clock reconnaissance on multiple and different targets,” the China Daily reported.

“The ship is so sophisticated that only a few countries, such as the United States and Russia, are capable of developing it,” it continued.

The China Daily quoted an unnamed source in the shipbuilding industry saying that the United States had 15 such ships.

The Tianlangxing arrived off the coast of Alaska shortly before the July 11 test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system against an intermediate-range ballistic missile.

A spokesperson for the Missile Defense Agency told The Epoch Times it was the fastest target the system has been tested against so far.

The ship stayed approximately 100 miles off the Alaskan coast.

The THAAD system is designed to protect against intermediate- and short-range ballistic missiles, like those North Korea has amassed and threatened to launch against Japan and South Korea.

China is North Korea’s closest ally and major trading partner, accounting for 75 percent of North Korea’s imports and exports.

China’s ruling Communist Party, which has a faction that is close to the North Korean regime, has denounced the THAAD system that is now partially deployed in South Korea.

Speaking at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on July 5, the day after North Korea successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that experts say could reach Alaska, representatives of China and Russia both called for the system to be dismantled.

The People’s Liberation Army, the army of the Chinese Communist Party, recently announced a breakthrough on a key weapons programs that may change the nature of war.

Chinese scientists claim they’ve had unexpected success in developing a high-powered microwave (HPM) weapon, according to The Diplomat. The magazine notes that in January, Huang Wenhua, deputy director of China’s Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology, was awarded for his research on directed energy, which HPM weapons use.

HPM systems are able to destroy electronic equipment, and in an age when most combat systems—from tanks to planes, radios to satellites—rely on electronics, the weapons could change the way wars are fought. Warships will be fitted with HPM weapons to intercept incoming missiles.

The HPM project, alongside other projects involving lasers and electromagnetic pulses, is part of the Chinese regime’s “Assassin’s Mace” (or “Trump Card”) program designed to defeat a technologically superior opponent by disabling or destroying the technology that makes the opponent superior.

Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon consultant, wrote in his 2016 book “The Hundred-Year Marathon” that the first time the United States lost a simulated war game was when his team was asked to employ China’s Assassin’s Mace weapons as the opposition.

He wrote that in the exercises, “whenever the China team used conventional tactics and strategies, America won—decisively. However, in every case where China employed Assassin’s Mace methods, China was the victor.”

According to Richard Fisher, senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, the Chinese regime’s new developments go even beyond the Assassin’s Mace program and represent an overall pivot toward “fifth-generation warfare concepts.”

It is a shift toward the areas of cyberwarfare, electronic warfare, and space warfare, using autonomous weapons.

The key to this shift, he said, is the Chinese military’s new Strategic Support Force branch, introduced in December 2015. Fisher said the new branch brings the military’s new weapons under one roof and demonstrates “the weaponization of broad information capabilities, plus the weaponization of outer space.”

The idea of space warfare, in particular, was center stage during the Cold War. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, which is now ratified by 105 countries. It set laws on the use of outer space and banned any nation from stationing nuclear warheads in space.

What the program did not forbid, however, was the use of conventional weapons in space, and China, in particular, has been developing weapons designed to destroy or disable satellites—which are the Achilles’ heel of the U.S. military.

The National Interest, an international affairs magazine, reported on March 10 that “China’s military is developing powerful lasers, electromagnetic railguns, and high-power microwave weapons for use in a future ‘light war’ involving space-based attacks on satellites.”

It cites a Chinese military journal from 2013, in which researchers disclosed the idea of placing a five-ton chemical laser in low-earth orbit. They wrote that “in future wars, the development of ASAT [anti-satellite] weapons is very important” and that “the space-based laser weapon system will be one of the major ASAT development projects.”

The Diplomat article reported on March 11 that China’s developments on high-powered microwave weapons “would undermine the efficacy of even the most advanced U.S. missiles,” and “applications could also include its use as an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon or incorporation with missiles in order to overcome enemy air defenses.”

Fisher said that by using the space-based laser platform, China would “realize the dream of Ronald Reagan’s strategic defense initiative,” as it grants them a large-scale defense system that could intercept warheads.

Fisher said that overall, the threat of fifth-generation weapons systems is growing, and that Chinese military doctrine and developments are making a significant push in this direction.

With its proposed laser system, in particular, he said that in a war scenario with China, they could “take down all of our satellites that we’re using to target China, to communicate with our forces, to conduct optical or electronic surveillance. We could very quickly become blind and vulnerable to Chinese strikes; and if we did launch our own strikes, these lasers could shoot down incoming warheads.”

Fisher said this system would go far beyond the anti-ballistic missile system known as THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, that the United States is current deploying in South Korea.

A recent order by the Communist Party will force the Chinese military and the Party’s paramilitary forces to remove themselves from business ventures—most prominently hospitals.
Hospitals run by the military and paramilitary are widely used by Chinese for healthcare services, and are often amply funded and well-equipped. The Chinese paramilitary forces are officially known as the People’s Armed Police, and are used for suppressing riots, disaster relief, and other tasks.
The order that the forces would get out of business—”paid services” to the public—was given by the Central Military Commission, and was reported in early April in the Chinese press. The Central Military Commission is chaired by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and is the Party’s organ for controlling the armed forces. Details of the notice, and the specific means for devolving control of hospitals and other businesses, was not immediately clear. A three year timeline for the implementation of the plan was given.
Chinese media and official statements said that the purpose of the order was to increase the fighting ability of the forces. “The mission of the military is to fight battles, and fight successfully. Anything that interferes with this mission must be eliminated,” said a commentary in the Guangdong newspaper Southern Weekend, summing up the official thinking.
A major consequence of the order, unremarked in Chinese reports, is that it will likely extricate the Chinese military from the organ harvesting and transplantation industry.
This is difficult to trace as an impetus for the rule, though it is an inevitable and significant consequence of it. Removing the military, in particular its extensive logistics departments, from running hospitals will likely lead to the military’s role in organ trafficking being phased out.
Organ Trafficking
The Chinese military and paramilitary run an extensive system of hospitals, among the most well-appointed and staffed in the country. Since 2000 many of the facilities went through extensive remodelling, or had added to them large wings dedicated to fields of medicine that integrate transplantation surgery.
Since 2005, Chinese officials have said that the vast majority of transplant organs come from death row prisoners—though this explanation fails to account for a vast industry that sprung up after 2000, as the number of death row prisoners was declining. Chinese hospitals have for the last 15 years performed a far greater number of transplants than death row prisoners could possibly supply.
The real source of the vast majority of organs is said by an increasing number of researchers to be prisoners of conscience: Uyghur muslims, who have vanished in large numbers after 2009, other religious minorities or marginalized individuals, but primarily practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that has been targeted for elimination since 1999.
As evidence continues to emerge showing that the scale and organization of the transplant industry in China is far greater than had been previously understood, it has become clear that the military-medical complex is a nexus for transplant activity.
Donor Warehouse
There are circumstantial indications that the military has played a key role in warehousing organ donors—prisoners of conscience ready to be killed on demand.
The evidence suggesting this possibility is primarily in the form of secretly recorded telephone calls with Chinese doctors and nurses. Amateur investigators overseas have for several years been placing calls to Chinese military and civilian hospitals masquerading as either doctors in China, or relatives of a patient in need of a transplant. They engage in sometimes lengthy phone conversations with health workers, who sometimes note that the military holds their organ supply. In some conversations, they speak of guaranteeing organ quality by being able to go to the “source” controlled by the military and performing extractions themselves.
Epoch Times has spoken extensively to the investigators making these calls, has listened to the audio files, reviewed the calling logs produced by the software that made the calls, and has verified many of the phone numbers dialled. Most of these investigators work under the aegis of the non-profit World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a network of researchers based primarily in the United States.
Lucrative Industry
Jiang Yanyong, a former chief physician of the 301 Military Hospital in Beijing, said in an interview with Hong Kong’s Cable Television last year that military hospitals are deeply involved in harvesting organs from prisoners, and that their organ transplant centers are a lucrative source of income. An individual in Jiang’s position would not normally be able to accept such an interview, on a highly sensitive topic, without approval.
There are many indications of the spread and profit involved in the organ transplant industry in China. One of the most emblematic is the case of the People’s Liberation Army’s 309 Hospital.
The top doctor at the hospital, Shi Bingyi, was said to have himself performed at least 2,130 kidney transplants and 380 liver transplants by 2011, according to an account by the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation, a Hong Kong-based NGO.
The 309 Hospital’s website said that its transplant center revenue grew eight fold in five years, from 30 million yuan ($4.6 million) in 2006 to 230 million yuan ($35 million) in 2010, according to archived websites.
Given the indications that practitioners of Falun Gong have been relied upon as a chief organ source, this vast industry has led to the deaths of over 100,000 Falun Gong adherents, according to recent estimates by Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, a medical advocacy group.
Some health workers around China have been looking forward to the military’s exit from the hospital industry for the last six months or so, according to interviews with their relatives in the United States. If military hospitals are devolved to local government control, military doctors and researchers will be reclassified as civilian, and be given passports, allowing them to travel overseas. Military personnel in China are forbidden from traveling except under controlled conditions.
‘Supreme Command’
The removal of the military from running hospitals is the latest sign of what appears to be a quiet clean-up of a profitable industry predicated on killing, since Party leader Xi Jinping came to office. If the Party is quietly ceasing the activity, there are no

As the Chinese National People’s Congress met in Beijing this week, one announcement was the planned defense budget for 2016. Contrary to some rumors, China’s defense budget will rise by “only” 7.6 percent in 2016, only the second time in 20 years that the growth has been in single digits. At 954 billion renminbi, or approximately $147 billion, China’s defense budget is second only to that of the United States.
The Chinese defense budget figure has long been a source of controversy, as it is believed to understate actual Chinese defense spending. Part of this is likely due to different accounting methods, as well as a tendency to limit transparency.
Nonetheless, it is clear that China is going to continue to allocate substantial resources to its defense modernization efforts, even as the Chinese economy shows signs of slowing.
The Chinese defense budget announcement comes on the heels of announcements of three major reform pathways.
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In December, the Chinese announced the establishment of three new services: a separate ground forces command; the elevation of the Second Artillery to the status of a service; and the creation of a separate service to control China’s space, electronic warfare, and computer network attack forces. Subsequently, the Central Military Commission was reorganized from four General Departments to 15 departments, commissions, and offices.
Finally, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has announced a transition from seven military regions to five theater or war zone joint commands. Coupled with the announcement of a 300,000-man cut in the size of the People’s Liberation Army made in September 2015, the PLA is clearly undergoing a massive, fundamental overhaul.
It is not clear why the Chinese defense budget increase was scaled back, although some analysts think it may reflect China’s slowing economy. It is worth noting, however, that the increase in the People’s Liberation Army budget is still substantially higher than the growth of any Western military.
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It also remains to be seen how the growth in the Chinese external security budget (i.e., for the PLA) compares with that for internal security, including the People’s Armed Police (PAP) and provincial-level public security forces. For the past several years, the internal security budget has grown more quickly than the defense budget, to the point where overall spending on internal security may outpace that for external defense.
Dean Cheng is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. Copyright The Daily Signal. This article was originally published on The Daily Signal.

This news analysis was originally dispatched as part of Epoch Times China email newsletters. Subscribe to the newsletters by filling your email in the “China D-brief” box under this article.
It was a long time coming, but the Chinese regime recently confirmed what military analysts have been predicting for years. China signed a deal with Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, to build an overseas military base.
The foreign ministry spokesperson of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hong Lei, said on Jan. 21 the base will give logistical support to the Chinese military, as it helps with anti-piracy operations.
The significance of the move, however, is likely less about military and more about business. China is working on deals to gain port access at every major maritime trade chokepoint, and the base in Djibouti will be a major step towards its objectives.
An unnamed journalist mentioned in the foreign ministry transcript that alongside the base deal, the CCP signed a deal with Djibouti that sets up a “free trade zone, expand[s] Djibouti’s role for transshipment of goods in trade between China and the world, and let[s] Chinese banks operate in Djibouti.”
The Chinese regime made a subtle move last year, which hinted at the deal. On April 2, 2015, China sent its Type 054A Linyi frigate to help evacuate 449 Chinese citizens from Yemen, who were then brought to Djibouti.
And while the world was watching the Chinese ship help in the evacuations, it sent a squadron of three warships, 800 sailors, and a special forces team to hold “anti-piracy patrols” in the nearby Gulf of Aden.
It then decided to leave the naval squadron in the region, and Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, Sun Weidong, said at the time the Chinese warships would “keep pirates away from one of the most important water courses in the world.”
It was also then that China began asking Djibouti for either special port access or basing rights.
On the surface there’s nothing special about a country wanting a military base in Djibouti—particularly since China is taking part in anti-piracy patrols in nearby waters.
The United States, France, and Japan also have military bases there, and it’s used as a staging area for anti-terror and anti-piracy operations.
As I’ve reported before, the real reason behind China’s interest in Djibouti likely ties to its push to have a military presence at all major maritime trade chokepoints.
The broader picture is that whoever controls the world’s shipping chokepoints controls the flow of oil and close to 90 percent of global trade.
Protecting this system is one of the key objectives of the United States under the “Pax Americana,” and the Chinese regime is trying to build a similar system, but in a way that more closely serves its interests while denying the interests of others.
The idea is that whoever secures the global trade channels also has influence over global trade. What has some defense experts concerned about the CCP replicating this system is that while the United States offers its service without cost and allows open access to all, the CCP system may be more selective with who can pass.
The concern is well grounded, since the CCP is already denying both air and maritime access to other nations in areas it has claimed in the South China Sea—and is stirring up trouble with most of the region’s neighboring countries.
The CCP’s presence in the South China Sea gives it influence over trade coming through the Strait of Malacca, which sees close to 13.6 million barrels of oil pass through it each day.
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Robert Haddick, author of “Fire on the Water: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific,” explained this push in a previous interview with Epoch Times, and noted, “I think people don’t appreciate this problem or threat because it’s so unfamiliar.”
The world’s most important chokepoints for shipping oil are the Strait of Malacca, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, the Panama Canal, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the Turkish Straits—and the Chinese regime is working on deals to gain port access around all of these.
Djibouti is positioned at the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, which sees close to 3.2 million barrels of oil pass through it each day.

This news analysis was originally dispatched as part of Epoch Times China email newsletters. Subscribe to the newsletters by filling your email in the “China D-brief” box under this article.
It’s possible a real-world nuclear war could end without a single missile being fired, and the United States could find itself on the losing end.
I’ve covered the problem before. The United States has barely moved its nuclear launch sites since the Cold War, and according to Richard Fisher, senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, all of these sites are overtargeted by Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Of course, it’s not unusual for rivals to target nuclear weapons sites; some of the original U.S. nuclear war scenarios had all the Soviet nuclear weapons sites as primary targets.
The difference today is that while you can literally find most U.S. nuclear weapons sites using Google Earth—and while Russia and the United States are disposing of warheads—the Chinese regime is making significant efforts to build its nuclear arsenals, and to keep these weapons hidden.
On Dec. 5, 2015, the Chinese regime tested a launcher on its new rail-mobile DF-41 ICBM, by ejecting the missile from its launch tube, but without igniting its engine. According to IHS Jane’s, it was “likely meant to test the tube launch system’s compatibility with its new rail car.”
The DF-41, officially called the Dongfeng-41 (“East Wind-41″), is a road-mobile ICBM that can carry 10 nuclear warheads. It can also allegedly hit targets between 7,400 and 9,000 miles away—enough to strike New York from Beijing.
What’s most interesting about the latest test, however, has less to do with the missile and more to do with the carrier. IHS Jane’s reported it “confirms previous reports of China’s interest in rail mobility to increase the survivability of its ICBM force.”
It may have obtained the designs from Ukraine. IHS Jane’s notes a 2013 report from the Georgetown University Arms Control Project says the Chinese regime obtained “ICBM rail car insights from Ukraine,” where the Soviets and Russia built their rail-mobile ICBM, the RT-23 (SS-24 Scalpel).
The mobile capabilities of the ICBMs is what should have the U.S. defense community worried. The idea of mobile launchers isn’t to find fancy ways to launch rockets, but instead to find ways to keep them hidden and always moving.
Previous versions of the DF-41 were carried by an 18-wheel transporter-erector-launcher. On February 19, 2015, the People’s Liberation Army Pictorial, a Chinese military magazine, published an image of a 16-wheel launch truck allegedly for its DF-31B ICMB.
The new launcher is yet another example of the intentionally opaque nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) nuclear weapons arsenal. While the U.S. has chosen to open its systems to the prying eyes of the world, the CCP knows that revealing the locations of nuclear warheads means telling your adversaries where to strike first.
Of course, the United States used to know this also. In the 1980s, the United States successfully developed ICBMs small enough to be transported and launched from a vehicle, under its Midgetman program. The idea behind Midgetman was to prevent U.S. adversaries from knowing the locations of its nuclear weapons, with an understanding that these sites would be the main targets in the event of nuclear war.
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The Midgetman program was scrapped, however, in 1992 shortly after the Cold War came to an end.
But while the Cold War between the Soviets and the United States is now just history, many of the same threats still stand with Communist China.
“If you look at new Chinese bases, it is quite easy to conclude that China is building up to the capability to pre-emptively strike our ICMB fields,” Fisher said, in a previous interview with Epoch Times.
He said, “We are on the road toward a near-term scenario in which we will be vulnerable to strategic blackmail.”

While “hand-made” is usually a good thing, this isn’t the case for the equipment used in modern combat aircraft. A propaganda video aired by the official Chinese broadcast mouthpiece shows key components of the J-15 fighter jet, which are made for aircraft carriers, being manually polished at Shenyang Aircraft Corp.

China has made massive investments in modernizing its military in recent years, but its armaments and military sector has been dogged by tales of corruption, ineptitude, and the need to burnish the force’s might through propaganda for a domestic audience.

The J-15 and its predecessors are a derivative of a Soviet-designed Sukhoi combat aircraft designated “Flanker” by NATO militaries.

By CCTV’s account, the fighter jet components produced by the technicians are controlled at three micron. That’s 0.0001 of an inch, or about 1/25 of a human hair. CCTV reported that the parts, which supposedly require a human touch because they are too difficult to be built by machines, needed to be replaced over 200 times each year.

“Nowadays advanced [computer numerical control] can completely achieve precision of two micron. The technician in the report would have to be a superman to be as precise as 3 micron,” said one user.

“How can a tool like that produce fighter jets?” another netizen said. “The precision of the numerical control machine is so backward. Shame on CCTV for trying to sensationalize such a humiliation.”

Another described the CCTV claim that “Chinese fighters focus on feelings while Americans want practicality” as “too hard to believe.”

Cutting Corners

Based on the Su-27 “Flanker,” the Su-33 fighter jet dates back to the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union was still shelling out vast sums to produce weapons capable of going toe-to-toe with Western adversaries. While no longer a new design, the Flanker remains a versatile and advanced plane, particularly with upgrades.

China’s recent defense modernizations place particular emphasis on air and naval power. The former Soviet Union, mostly Russia and Ukraine, have been instrumental in exporting defense technology to fuel the Chinese military’s expansions.

In the early 1990s, the Chinese acquired the Su-27, which it built under license from the Shenyang Aircraft Corp. as the J-11. Forming the backbone of China’s fighter jet production, this state-run manufacturer has been at the center of major corruption scandals, including allegations that almost all of their production projects involve outsourcing.

An armed Chinese J-11 fighter jet flies near an American patrol aircraft over the South China Sea in international airspace on Aug. 19, 2014. (U.S. Navy Photo/Released)

The J-11 designs were later reverse-engineered and China began producing homegrown derivatives of the aircraft. In 2003, a Ukrainian prototype of the Su-33 was sold to China, and it is believed to have formed the base of the J-15, a handful of which are undergoing trials for use on China’s aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. The carrier itself is a retrofit of the Varyag, a Soviet “heavy aviation cruiser” also owned by Ukraine before its sale to China.

But despite these purchases and upgrades, the Chinese industry itself seems to be complicating the communist regime’s military dreams. Chinese combat jets are still reliant on either aging Russian engines from the 1980s, or locally-produced powerplants that suffer from poor quality and compatibility problems.

Part of the reason for this dearth of quality that is holding back China’s fighters lies in the corruption and shortcuts common in the nation’s state-run industrial complex.

A manager at Shenyang Aircraft Corp., who requested to have his name withheld, told Epoch Times that “four company executives formed partnerships and embezzled about 100 million yuan ($16 million) each year. The corruption is to the degree that money had already been stolen before the aircraft parts entered production.”

The manager also said that temporary workers from eight factories had mass produced key components on the J-8 fighter jets—the mainstay of China’s interceptor forces—without training, certification, or work authorization. This has led to several major accidents.

The corrupt executives replaced some of the key components in the fighter jets, and heads of private companies paid people off to settle the issue.

According to the manager, because of hidden dangers lurking in its military aircraft, the Shenyang corporation has to have specialized repair teams on standby at all times when the Chinese air force conducts operations.